The Twenty20 format of cricket has found favour with cricket lovers and advertisers alike. According to an IMRB survey conducted for Outlook Business and Mindshare, the T20 format is best advertising platform for beverage brands, while ODIs are the best fit for mobile phones and mobile service providers.

The survey’s finding that cricket ruled amongst all other sports came as no surprise. It was followed by football, hockey, tennis and wrestling. In cricket, while the T20 World Cup 2007 garnered 54 per cent viewers’ votes, the ICC World Cup got 29 per cent votes.

As far as advertising efficiency is concerned, Reliance emerged as the brand highest on the salience ladder, being the only brand to include the official global partner element in their communication message, followed by Nokia and Pepsi.

For the Top 10 brands on salience in TV advertising, the total recall is highest for Nokia, followed by Pepsi, Reliance Mobile and Hero Honda. However, the highest top of mind recall was for Reliance Mobile.

Regarding the ad viewing behaviour, the survey found that given the short duration and fast paced nature of the T20 game, ad breaks are perceived to be disturbing, however, the tendency to watch ads during a T20 match was much higher than a Test or ODI match.

In fact, T20 has emerged as the cricket format of choice for sports follower in India. In view of the gradually growing fatigue with ODI and Test cricket, T20 could emerge as the popular format in the future as it delivers on the aspects on which the traditional formats have faltered – the Twenty20 format is exciting and entertaining, unpredictable results, fast-paced and of shorter duration.

The survey covered 2,100 respondents, with 420 respondents in each centre of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata. The target respondents for the study included both males and females from SEC A, SEC B and SEC C households and in the 15-24, 25-34, 35-44 age groups.

According to the survey, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai displayed similar patterns at the total level, while in Kolkata, football commanded a following of 97 per cent.